The present invention relates generally to the field of information management systems. More specifically, the present invention relates to a standardized information management system for long-term residence facilities, such as group homes for people with disabilities, nursing homes and the like, that monitors and promotes consistency, stability, and improvement in the care, tracking and teaching of the clients of the facility. Most important, the present invention provides a structure for continual improvement of the quality of individual service delivery and the enhanced living options for each client.
The use of computer technology in the field of health care has grown extensively over the last two decades. Today, computers are routinely used in hospital and clinical settings as critical components of health care delivery. One important area of health care where computers have been utilized in the delivery of health care services is in the area of monitoring and tracking of patient information.
Computer-based devices that include sensors or other equipment for taking patient measurements as part of a health monitoring system are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,803,625, 5,199,439, 5,307,263, 5,372,709 and 5,558,638. U.S. Pat. No. 5,691,215 describes a system for monitoring and generating reports and trend analysis based on daily living activity monitored by use of motion detectors or similar activity detection subsystems. Health monitoring systems that use computers as patient input devices for collecting and tracking data entered by a patient are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,542,420 and 5,890,997. The processing of accounting and insurance information in a hospital or clinic are typically managed by computer systems, as shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,732,401 and 5,799,286. Patient data may even be directly entered into a computer by the physician or care provider, as shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,845,253 that describes a system in which a physician enters patient data which is then archived and tracked longitudinally, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,691,932 that describes a care giver data collection and reminder system for use particularly with infants.
While the use of computer systems in a hospital or clinical setting to monitor and track patient information in the delivery of health care services has become widespread, there has not been a corresponding utilization of computer technology in monitoring and tracking information about the clients of long-term residence facilities, such as group homes for people with disabilities, mental health facilities, juvenile justice facilities, nursing homes, traumatic brain injury facilities and the like. There are many potential reasons why computer systems have not been adapted for use in such long-term residence facilities. Unlike clinical and hospital settings that offer health care services designed to return a patient to normal health, long-term residence facilities provide life care services designed to support and maintain a client""s normal daily living activities. Although these kind of life care services involve unique hands-on, one-on-one services that can only be delivered by individual staff members, these services are relatively simple from a technology perspective when compared to the high technology, equipment-oriented services involved in many kinds of health care services. Instead of being funded primarily by private insurance reimbursements like most hospital and clinics, long-term residence facilities more typically have limited financial resources that do not permit experimentation with the use of expensive computer technology. To complicate matters further, many of the clients of these long-term residence facilities may have limited capacities to communicate with staff about their physical and emotional well-being. This can make even normal communications difficult and the use of client-controlled computer interfaces almost impossible. Collecting information about one aspect of a patient""s life that is the focus for specific health care services can be a manageable job; however, data collection and management in a long-term residence facility is a formidable job because it would need to be continual and practically all-encompassing. For these reasons and others, there has been no comprehensive and systematic approach to the utilization of computer technology and information management systems in long-term residence facilities.
The present invention is a standardized information management system for use in long-term residence facilities that continually collects and manages all information related to both the clients and staff of the facility. The collection and management of this information is standardized to create consistency and stability in the care, tracking and teaching of the clients of the facility. To facilitate this standardization, the information management system breaks activities of the clients down into a set of defined duties, each of which represent a unit of assignable work that involves a client, a staff member or both. The step-by-step tasks that comprise a given duty are individually definable using a standardized database process that structures the definition of each task within certain parameters and provides a reusable set of resources once the tasks are created in the system. Duties may be clustered together to form activities which are then scheduled as staff responsibilities based on staff availability and qualifications and appropriateness to client needs and preferences. A comprehensive plan for each client is created by scheduling relevant activities for that client on a daily basis. The plan is displayed for staff members at a centrally located work station by the system and the performance of each duty may be evaluated and recorded in the system using standardized rating scales and special data collection set-ups as appropriate. The system also allows for recording of periodic information on health and behavior management issues in real time. All of this information is compiled by the system for analysis to generate standardized and customized reports that provide feedback to the staff for purposes of future planning and the dissemination of data summaries to external stakeholders of the long-term residence facility for informational and monitoring purposes.
The information management system is implemented as part of a networked computer system that runs three sets of software processes: (1) the utility processes for managing personnel records and work shift schedules, including the master scheduler, (2) the supervisory processes for planning service needs and posting daily schedules, including the individual planner process, the task definition process, and the assessment process, and (3) the display processes including the kiosk display processes that operates a display device located in the living area of a facility for displaying current work information and entering data into the system. Together, these process modules implement the major features of the standardized information management system of the present invention, including: (i) creating, defining and scheduling activities for both staff and clients; (ii) maintaining staff qualifications and availability for scheduling qualified staff to perform activities; (iii) displaying information and tracking performance of scheduled activities; (iv) completing periodic data entry on health and behavioral issues for the clients; and (v) generating a variety of flags, reports and graphs based on a compilation and analysis of all of this information.
One of the major hardware components of the preferred embodiment of the information management system of the present invention is a kiosk display networked into the computer system and located in the living quarters of the long-term residence facility. Staff can use the kiosk to obtain information from, and enter data into, the system while they are working with the clients. Preferably, the kiosk display is provided with a touch screen display where the touch screen may be protected from access by the clients if necessary to prevent damage or inappropriate access.
The present invention is a comprehensive and systematic approach to providing information management services in the context of a long-term residence facility. By adopting the standardized approach to the definition, assignment, tracking and reporting of all of the daily duties and activities of both the clients and staff, the present invention affords the opportunity for consistency and stability in client-staff interaction. The same tasks will be performed in the same way with each client, regardless of which staff member is delivering these life services. The same set of rating scales are used to evaluate performance, making it possible to statistically evaluate performance in terms of reliability, integrity and validity. The use of standardized data definitions across a broad range of tasks and clients offers the opportunity for practical applications of psychological research. This can be accomplished through the clustering of tasks into basic skill sets. Such applied psychological research will enable greatly improved professional planning for skill enhancement programs for dependent clients.
The continual and standardized tracking of performance of activities and duties of the clients, as well as health and behavioral information, affords the opportunity to provide meaningful feedback on the effectiveness of the life services being provided. This feedback is not only useful for the staff at the facility, but also can be provided to a wide variety of concerned third party stakeholders, including health care providers, guardians and families, and licensing and regulatory authorities. The ease of use of the kiosk display together with the standardized scales used to evaluate clients encourages highly accurate data collection on a real time basis. Moreover, the standardized information management system is comprehensive and is organized to encompass all of the major aspects of providing life care services for long-term residence facilities such that staff confusion over where to find or record information is eliminated. In contrast to the burdensome and relatively ineffective nature of the existing disparate methods of information collection utilized in long-term residence facilities, the standardized information management system of the present invention actually assists staff in their job of providing life care services to the clients of a long-term residence facility.